A story coming in from the Washington Post that may very well be a true signal on the gravity of this financial crisis:
Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair told Congress today that instability in countries around the world caused by the current global economic crisis rather than terrorism is the primary near-term security threat to the United States.
“Roughly a quarter of the countries in the world have already experienced low-level instability such as government changes because of the current slowdown,” Blair told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence.
The story goes on to add that this is the first time in six years where DNI’s annual threat assessment did not have terrorism as the number one danger to the country.
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Or, you know, terrorism might just have not actually been THAT big a threat to begin with, to the United States anyway.
Joey, one thing that convinced me of that view was that Jeffrey Goldberg piece for the Atlantic on airport security. If security is that bad, anyone who wanted to cause trouble could get through. But nobody has, amazingly.
That’s what I mean. If security is that bad and terrorism is as big a threat as it’s made out to be, wouldn’t we have been attacked again by now?
I mean, I’m not trying to say we shouldn’t be doing more and doing things better. Just that the risk of terrorism within the territory of the United States, to me, has long been deliberately exaggerated – particularly compared to other parts of the world.